UNIT
Cardboard Furniture
MYP UNIT QUESTION
How can I create a product from recycled cardboard?
SIGNIFICANT CONCEPTS
To create a seating solution using cardboard. We have enough chairs but do we have the
ideal chair for our purpose? We have excess cardboard in the school. Can we use the
properties of cardboard coupled with what we learned about structures to build furniture
that can support our audience?
AREAS OF INTERACTION
Environment (students create from waste rather than consuming and discarding).
Health and Social Education (students consider the ergonomics of existing seating
solutions and incorporate ergonomics into their own design)
Human Ingenuity (students discover that basic structural concepts can be applied to
something as seemingly fragile as cardboard and learn to look around for everyday
solutions to construction problems).
CONTENT
BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE: Structures (review columns and compressive strength,
trusses, buttresses, triangles and static structures, loads and joints, center of gravity).
INVESTIGATE: Explore chair design throughout world history, investigate designer
chairs.
DESIGN: Teach ergonomics and proportions. Review scale modeling, and orthographic
illustrations.
PLAN: Review Gantt chart or other step-by-step and block methods of planning
CREATE: Review utility knife usage, measuring, scale, attaching methods such as gluing
techniques (too much glue will weaken bonds).
EVALUATE: Encourage students to plan how to test their product in the investigation
stage and make sure they are looking back to their design specification in order to test it.
Suggest surveys or questionnaires for their testing audience to complete.
LEARNING EXPERIENCES
1.After reviewing structures with quick games such as who can build the highest tower
out of five sheets of newspaper, or who can build a chair that supports them out of a stack
of newspaper, talk about famous structures and what makes them stand (or fall down).
2. Hand out the What Is A Chair? sheet. Have students do a timed stream of
consciousness writing in their books answering the questions.
3. After sharing their often-humourous ideas have students sit their classroom chair the
most comfortable position to them. Ask if this is how they usually sit in their chair. Now
have them assume a sitting position that makes them feel alert. Ask if it is different than
their previous position. Discuss what they would change about the chair and what are
some of the things the people who designed the chair had to consider as they designed it.
4.Hand out the Is the Chair You Are Sitting On Comfortable? sheet and have students
complete the measurement of their bodies challenge. Discuss.
5. Talk about chairs throughout history using the Chairs of the World handout. Then
guide students in their own investigation of designer chairs with the List of Suggested
Designer’s Chairs handout. Students independently research these and others and sketch
a minimum of three chairs that inspire them in their books.
6.Show PowerPoint of student chairs completed in the past. Talk about the properties of
cardboard, as the students will probably be amazed at these examples.
7. Now the students are ready to create their design brief. They choose what problem they
want to make their chair a solution for. Hand out Chair Design Challenge.
8. Students independently investigate, design and plan for their own design specification.
They then create a mockup using a 2” scale. This is also evaluated by them to complete
the design cycle.
9. Students then present their mock-up and design cycle finding to a group they are
assigned to. They are trying to sell their idea.
10. The group chooses which design they want to manufacture.
11. In groups of 4 or 5 students produce the chosen chair using cardboard. Each student
contributes to going back through the design cycle. Perhaps the design was modified to
incorporate another group members’ suggestion. The plan will also have to be modified.
12. Chairs are the tested and evaluated by the entire group.
EXTENSIONS
1. Have students make a plan for instructables.com about how to create their chair
and post it there. http://photojojo.com/content/tips/product-photo-tips-for-ebayetsy-instructables/ has a nice tutorial about how to take better photos for the
Internet.
SUGGESTIONS
Upload handouts onto a digital learning environment or email to students if school is
laptop equipped to make this unit more environmental by saving paper. Another solution
would be to display the handouts on the classroom LCD projector perhaps?
INTERDISIPLINARY
Sign up by emailing your educational philosophy at
http://www.salvadori.org/lessonplans/the_school.php and they will give you access to
their lesson plans. They have great examples of ways to make the cardboard furniture
unit cross curricular. Most handouts referred to in this unit have been taken/adapted from
http://www.salvadori.org/lessonplans/lesson_detail.php?id=5
MATHS:
The Lesson: Form and Furniture
Make a scale drawing of a chair of your own design based on the dimensions of
your body.
Content Focus
Built Environment: Architectural Drawing/2D, Form, Measuring/Estimating, and
Scale/Proportion
Math: Calculation: Averages, Measurement: Angles and Distance, Ratio and
Proportion, Scale
Science: Human Body, Matter: Properties
Technology: Engineering Design
DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY:
The Lesson: Sit Right
Design and build a strong, lightweight ergonomic cardboard chair proportioned
for your comfort.
Content Focus
Built Environment: Architectural Drawing/2D, Beams, Compression/Tension,
Ergonomics, and Scale/Proportion, Stress
Science: Human Body, Matter: Properties
Technology: Construction Technologies, Engineering Design
LANGUAGE A:
The Lesson: Design Writes
Write a proposal for the patent of your ergonomic chair.
Content Focus
Built Environment: Ergonomics
Language Arts: Reading Comprehension, Writing: Technical
RESOURCES:
http://www.ergonomics4schools.com/ : This site encourages learning about
ergonomics among secondary school students and their teachers.
http://ditc.missouri.edu/index.html : This site appears to be a dead link now, but if
it comes back it is a great resource as it had video of students creating a cardboard
chair and some lesson plans to help you do the project with your students.
http://baudandbui.free.fr/members/members.shtml: Contrary to what anyone
thinks, cardboard is a very strong and cheap material. For these reasons, it always
fascinates many generations of architects and designers all around the world. You
can submit a lesson plan to this site to get access to other teacher’s lesson plans.
http://nsdl.org/resource/2200/20061002135114016T : Many people have never
attempted to build their own furniture because they feel it would be too difficult or
too expensive to make anything worthwhile. In this video segment from ZOOM, a
young designer named Nick demonstrates his process for designing and
constructing attractive, sturdy chairs from cardboard.
http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/nysatl/Technology/chairdesign/html/index.html : In
this Learning Experience students learn about ergonomics as they design a chair
based on the anthropometric measurements taken of their classmates.
http://www.supernaturale.com/articles.html?id=198 : An article, Cardboard, Your
New Best Friend By: Maggie McGinnis
http://www.andrewsenior.com/gallery/design/cardboard_instruct.html :
Instructions on how to build a cardboard chair.
http://www.designboom.com/cardboard3.html : More illustrated instructions to
build a chair out of cardboard.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/12/davidgraas_furn.php : Furniture from
cardboard.
Leo Kempf: cardboard designer.